In a welcome move designed to thwart the efforts of scamware on the iTunes App Store, Apple announced yesterday via its Developer Portal that app screenshots uploaded and approved by the app review team will remain locked.

Beginning January 9, app screenshots will be locked in iTunes Connect once your app has been approved. New screenshots may be uploaded when you submit a binary for an update to an existing app or a new app.

The move is designed to stop a growing problem that saw developers upload benign photos only to replace them with copyrighted images of already popular games once an app passed the approval process.

In a video illustrating the problem, a rip-off app titled Mooncraft (supposedly a clone of Minecraft) has app photos that couldn’t be more different than the actual game within.

And in another example, one company uploaded an unofficial Pokemon app that skyrocketed up the paid apps list on iTunes after the company replaced its initial app screenshots with those from the legit Nintendo game. Countless consumers were bilked out of their money as a result.